Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Diogenes, Near the Goat Trail, Far from the Milky Way

Diogenes had spent the last five years in Romania, but whenever he happened to come across “The Rill World” program on Channel Tao when flipping through his satellite channels, he would be reminded of his Milky Way Creek home. He had been living contentedly in his own hand-built yurt in the rocky Carpathian foothills, next to a literal goat trail, but he missed the sound of running water.

In Romania, he had learned that there are two kinds of people: those who believe in vampires and those who claim not to believe in vampires. In Romania, he also learned, it is illegal to disturb the peace of the dead. Disturbing the peace meant unearthing the body, removing the heart, burning the heart on an iron plate, mixing the ashes with water, and drinking the mixture. Those whose peace was disturbed were thought to be vampires. Of course, if they were vampires, they were not dead and therefore were not protected by the law. It all depended on one’s world view. Although it was in Romania he had learned about this curious lore, he had learned about it from an old copy of USA Today, which he’d found with several other bags of old newspapers and magazines, just off the goat trail when he first began exploring the area. In his five years in Vlad the Impaler’s homeland, he had yet to meet anyone who would admit to any knowledge of or belief in vampires.

Before he assumed his current name, he had been Dee Genesis, short-time drummer in Fecal Matters. He had left the band after a falling out with Roger, the singer, over the affections of Susan Sun-Shu, the band’s manager at the time. No sooner had he resigned than Susan broke it off with Roger, and the next morning Roger was lion’s meat. Dee, crushed by guilt, left Susan and returned to his childhood home in South Carolina, where he squatted in a shack on a creek bank for a few weeks. During his creek bank reveries, he became Diogenes. One day when cruising the alleys, looking for an honest man or a discarded sandwich, he found an old globe in a dumpster. He spun the globe, closed his eyes, and put his index finger on Romania. He headed for the columnated Roman revival bank where he had stashed his savings and then headed out of the country.